How Oyays Started: A Free Needoh Every Day

Oyays started with a simple question: what if a giveaway was actually fun to enter?

Most online giveaways are boring. You fill out a form, follow some accounts, share a post, and then wait. There is no feedback, no excitement, and no way to know if the result was even fair. You just hope your name gets picked — and then you never hear anything again.

I have entered dozens of online giveaways over the years, and the experience is almost always the same: fill out a form, forget about it, occasionally wonder if anyone actually won. It feels less like a giveaway and more like a data collection exercise dressed up as a promotion.

The idea

I wanted to build something different. A giveaway that was genuinely fun to participate in — not just a form to fill out. Something with a moment of excitement, a clear result, and a way to verify that the outcome was fair.

The slot machine format felt right. There is something universally satisfying about watching reels spin and waiting to see where they land. It is immediate, visual, and exciting in a way that a form submission never is. I built a custom slot machine game — the Jolly Joyful — and wired it to a provably-fair server-side random function. Every spin is real. Every result is verifiable.

The key design decision was to make the game completely free. No tokens to buy, no premium spins, no paid boosts. Just spin for free, as many times as you want, every day. The only thing you need is a free account.

Why Needoh?

I needed a prize that was small enough to ship cheaply, fun enough to be worth winning, and interesting enough to build a brand around. Needoh checked every box.

I had been a Needoh fan for a while before I started Oyays. I kept one on my desk and found myself reaching for it constantly during stressful calls and long work sessions. The fill material is genuinely unlike anything else — it has a dough-like resistance that is deeply satisfying in a way that is hard to explain until you try it.

Needoh toys are also affordable enough to give away every day. At around $8–10 retail, I can sustain a daily giveaway without it becoming financially unsustainable. And they are small enough to ship cheaply — a Needoh fits in a standard padded mailer and ships for a few dollars.

I want to be clear: Oyays is not affiliated with Schylling, Inc. (the maker of Needoh) in any way. I am just a fan who buys Needoh toys at retail and gives them away for free. Needoh® is a registered trademark of Schylling, Inc.

The provably-fair commitment

From the beginning, I wanted Oyays to be verifiably fair — not just trustworthy, but mathematically provable. I use HMAC-SHA256 to generate every spin result, and I publish a cryptographic commitment of the daily seed before any spins happen. After the day ends, I reveal the seed so anyone can verify every result.

This is not just a nice-to-have. It is the foundation of what Oyays is. I do not want you to trust me. I want you to be able to verify me. The math does not lie, and that is the point.

The provably-fair system also protects me. Because every result is cryptographically verifiable, there is no way for anyone to claim I rigged the outcome. The commitment is published before any spins happen, so I cannot change the seed after seeing the results. The system is designed to be trustworthy even if you assume I am not.

What's next

We are just getting started. One Needoh per day, every day, completely free. I hope to expand the prize catalog, add more ways to play, and eventually open up to international players. But the core will always be the same: a free, fair, fun daily giveaway.

If you have questions, feedback, or just want to say hi, reach out at support@oyays.com. I read every email.

Come spin with us.

— Brad Perry, Founder of Oyays